Disclaimer: AIR belongs to KEY animations.

"Somewhere out there, the girl with wings is dreaming sad dreams..."

My mother had chosen her over me. The girl with wings. Each and every night during our travels she retold her tale to me and I, with my childhood and my jealousy, hated her for it.

Why did she value that being over me? Was I not her son? Did her blood not flow in my veins? However magical that being claimed to be, I should precede her in my mother's heart.

I was but a child then.

She had left me all too soon, fusing the last of her powers together with all those who had come before her and sealing them and herself within that ragged little puppet. The last words I heard escape from her lips was a plea for me to save the winged girl in the sky. When she was gone, I picked up the puppet and threw it as far away as I could.

But no matter how I tried to hate her, I couldn't bring myself to ignore her last request.

And so I traveled.

I searched.

Alone.

Until I met her.

Her hair sparkled and gleamed with the vibrance of sunshine itself, and her eyes reflected only the clarity of the bluest of skies. Innocence shaped her young face and her timid smile held all the appeal of a gentle shower of cool raindrops after a scorching summer day.

However, despite all the beauty she possessed, both within and without as circumstance had revealed to me, she was alone, same as I.

She had only her dreams to keep her company. Dreams of the wind and the clouds and the vast blue sky. Dreams of another life, in another place and another time. Dreams of sadness and loneliness and pain.

I knew then that my search was over.

Should I help her, after what she had done to me?

Did she deserve to be set free from her eternal curse of loneliness and pain?

I dreaded the answer that the child in me would give.

But I was no longer a child.

I had known what loneliness felt like and I, in my mortal form, could only hope to feel a fraction of the suffering that she had undergone.

How many lifetimes had she been like this? How many lifetimes had she wandered the surface of the earth on her own, shunned even by those whom she loved?

No being so pure and true should be condemned to an eternity of pain.

It would not be enough, but she would have all of me, all of what I have to give, should she ever need it.

I long for that day.

I know it would be her release, as well as mine.

And maybe then she would at last be able to dream dreams of happiness and peace, free with the creatures of her kind to glide the vastness of the skies and soar to the heights of the heaven that had been denied to them for so long.

Owari

AN: I was browsing through the anime categories in ffnet and found one for AIR. Seeing there was no entry for this category, and I had one handy, I thought I'd go fill the blank space up with my drivel. :P This was a piece I've done way long ago when I first saw the anime, so yeah, it's old. But I hoped you liked.